Thursday, December 22, 2005

Mainstream Media: Schizophrenic? Or Simply Nuts?

From today's Los Angeles Times, we hear from Max Boot:IT SEEMS like only yesterday that every high-minded politician, pundit and professional activist was in high dudgeon about the threat posed to national security by the revelation that Valerie Plame was a spook. For daring to reveal a CIA operative's name — in wartime, no less! — they wanted someone frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs, preferably headed for the gallows.Since then there have been some considerably more serious security breaches. Major media organs have broken news about secret prisons run by the CIA, the interrogation techniques employed therein, and the use of "renditions" to capture suspects, right down to the tail numbers of covert CIA aircraft. They have also reported on a secret National Security Agency program to monitor calls and e-mails from people in the U.S. to suspected terrorists abroad, and about the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity designed to protect military bases worldwide.Most of these are highly classified programs whose revelation could provide real aid to our enemies — far more aid than revealing the name of a CIA officer who worked more or less openly at Langley, Va....The media, for years living in a world of its own, seems to be developing a split personality; changing definitions of phrases/events as it suits their momentary reality.Somebody bust out the DSM III; isn't this the definition of a certain type of psychological disorder?And can I please use the word "treasonous" as an adjective the next time I want to modify the phrase "mainstream media"?Link to Boot's full article here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boot21dec21,0,6755116.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

UPDATE:If you are in the mood for some dead-on bias-bashing, link here http://www.timeswatch.org/quotes/2005/nq122005.asp to Times Watch "Quotes of Note - Worst of '05"...the depth and the breadth of the liberal bias is remarkable; I'm going to excerpt the first one for you if you promise to go read the rest (remember, Santa's watching...):**The Deaniac Award for Iraq War Defeatism **"And in the shadow of the bleak and often horrific news emerging from Iraq nearly every day, historians and political experts are finding at least a wan hope in those imperfect historical analogies. Even in the absence of a sudden and dramatic shift on the battlefield toward a definitive victory, there may still be a slight opening, as narrow as the eye of a needle, for the United States to slip through and leave Iraq in the near future in a way that will not be remembered as a national embarrassment."-- From reporter James Glanz's November 27 story for the Week in Review section.